Our basic religious problem is God’s radical transcendence. Far more than its poetic value, however, eating and drinking is significant because it trains us, at least implicitly, for communion with God. Both our scripture and our ritual tradition abound with it. But can food introduce us to what is beyond our humanity? Can it educate us toward God? The religious significance of food is apparent to both Jews and Christians. Food integrates and reconnects our human nature: the body, the passions, the mind the intellect and the will the heart and the hearts of others. We are led to the higher by way of the lower.Įating well requires attention to this upward and outward motion within us. There is an inner progression between the two, such that the pleasures of eating and drinking can actually prepare us, by their proper effects upon the soul, to enter the joys of communion. The connection between food and friendship is not merely circumstantial. Man apprehends and acts as a unity of faculties, so it should be no surprise that pleasures and joys be found so often together. But while distinct, pleasure and joy are rarely separable experiences. We take pleasure ( delectatio) in sensible objects-this delicious dinner and we find joy ( gaudium) in intelligible objects-our fellow dinner guests.

There are sensual and spiritual pleasures. Pleasure flows naturally within our relationship to reality. For Thomas, the world in which we find ourselves is one bursting with real objects full of their own goodness. Not because he is a hedonist, but rather a realist of the highest order. Pleasure is a fundamental principle in the moral theology of St. The pedagogy of the table begins with pleasure.

But do we continue to take this humble pedagogy seriously? Can our daily eating and drinking not only form, but also heal and re-order our capacity for personal communion? To see this possibility, we must start from the very beginning: eating well means enjoying the food we eat. To eat well means to follow this dynamic of connection and foster its growth in daily living. Food, therefore, can even be said to open the possibility of connection with God. Eating together forms the social structure in which we learn the arts of companionship and celebration. Food connects man with himself: that is, as an embodied self. What does it mean to “eat well?” Our relationship with food, even in ordinary daily eating and drinking, is one of the most fundamental ways we relate to reality.

Babette's feast by isak dinesen